From the dirt to our plate; the trials and realities of first-time farm ownership

Chick Sexing On the 3rd Week: Your Thoughts?

As you all may know I’ve been testing out a theory of chick sexing using tail feather development. In chick batch #1 the this style of sexing resulted in chick sex being completely the opposite of what I was told to expect using this method. In batch #2 I continued the experiment using the same process.

Now that we have hit the 3 weeks of age mark I’ve decided to share a few of my initial findings using this method. This time, with pictures I bet you can see where I’m starting to have concerns.

Chick B – Tail Feather Sexed Female. Very yellow feet and the start of comb development. Two other chicks in batch #1 tail feather sexed female with this identical coloring. Both turned out to be cockerels.

Chick C – Tail Feather Sexed Female and supported by being a barred rock with dark feet, no head spot and no comb development.

Chick F – Tail Feather Sexed Male and supported by the barred rock large white head spot and lighter color feet with very little comb development.

So, as you can see, I have quite the mix here. I’m still up in the air over the sex of some of these babies. As they continue to grow I’m starting to see comb development, leg girth and body size differences. To further complicate matters, I have one rooster with a pea comb, one with a single comb. Most of my hens have the single fan-shaped comb but one hen has a cushion comb. Because the combs have different rates of maturation, comb sexing will not be accurate until week 5 or 6.

For all you chicken people out there…feel free to chime in with what you think the sex of chicks A thru F are. Cast your votes in the comments section. I’d love to hear from you!